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Primus: Still Sucking After All These Years

The reconstituted Primus went on to record 1997’s Brown album, which, more than anything, showed Claypool that he shouldn’t second-guess himself.

“After that, I gave up having goals for myself,” he says now. “I got to a point, creatively, where I was thinking about it way too much. I look at that stuff and it’s the worst stuff I’ve ever done. I’m not trying to imply that [Primus label] Interscope ever gave us a lot of pressure. They really didn’t. I just felt like [then-Interscope president] Tom Whalley was disappointed. And it just kind of bummed me out.

“I was just in this panic,” he continues. “Here we are, going to do something that we really think is cool and people kept saying: ‘Well, where’s Tim?’ and ‘How come it doesn’t sound like Primus?’ Then sales went down, which is a normal thing. It’s going happen if you change a member, unless you make the album of your life. And we hadn’t.

“Before that time, we didn’t care if people took us seriously or not,” he further reveals. “But when we were making the Brown album, we did. And it just ruined us. It wasn’t so much pressure from the record company, it was more pressure that I was inflicting on myself, in anticipation of what people would say. It was just a terrible time. Second-guessing everything I did. I hated it. I didn’t like the Brown album at all—not one bit.”

Primus 2.0 went on to make one more album, 1999’s Antipop, a record full of braggadocio and wit. It restored the group’s sense of irreverence, if only because Claypool hired seven of his most tetchy friends—Stewart Copeland, Tom Waits, James Hetfield, Tom Morello, Jim Martin, Matt Stone, Fred Durst and Martina Topley Bird—to each produce a track, without regard to coherence or taste. What emerged was a masterful interpretation of what Primus meant to all these high-profile pals with an unexpected mission statement on the title track: “I am Antipop; I’ll run against the grain till the day I drop/ I am the Antipop; the man you cannot stop.”

But most of all, Antipop restored Primus to its position as devil-may-care outcasts who had little concern about anyone’s opinion. It said more about Claypool than it did about Primus. However, shortly into the millennium, Primus was on ice again.

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Joining Claypool, who stands for the entire two hours and 12-minute duration of the interview, is a rather taciturn LaLonde, who’s main comments are of the comedic peanut gallery variety and, when he eventually spills into the room toward the end of the conversation, a boisterous Lane who a former bandmate described as “a force of nature with no manners.”

The bassist pushes up the sleeves of his black Levi’s jacket and wipes an imaginary speck of dust off the fine-grained wooden bar that is the centerpiece of Claypool Cellars tasting room, girding himself for a grilling.

The question as to why Claypool Cellars only produces one varietal—pinot noir—is easy: Because that’s what Les Claypool likes to drink. And as with everything else in a Claypoolian universe, he doesn’t care what anyone thinks.

But why wine?

“What, you think I don’t look like a wine guy?” he sneers. He’s only half-kidding, pausing an awkward second too long. “Oh, you think just because I’m from El Sobrante, California, I should be drinking beer?” He peers from behind oversized black-rimmed glasses at the great height of 6’2”.

My thought-balloon response: Whatever you say, boss. After all, I am 150 miles from home, in a near-abandoned shopping center, with a man who likes to put on pig masks just for the fun of it.

“Oh no, I would never take you for a beer drinker,” I protest. My thought balloon pops up again: Just because you fish, drive a tractor and like to make penis jokes, the thought never occurred to me.

I know Claypool can read my mind because he gives me a funny look and continues. “Beer makes you turn into a fat guy, and I’ve hit that part of my metabolism where I have to worry about that stuff,” he says.

This is where I’m supposed to say: Are you kidding?! You’re as thin as one of your Whamolas! But I don’t say that, because I have seen Les Claypool dressed in only a black bowler hat and a bathroom plunger and his man-boy supermodel body is rather manly. Not fat, mind you. More like Eric Clapton when he stopped believing that he was God and started making records with blues guys.

“I’ve just never been a big beer guy,” he insists. “It’s just not my thing. Instead, I’m making fancy booze for semi-fancy folks.”
Which is not too different than what he does in his other job as Primus’ past and present majordomo, leading the band in making fancy music for semi-fancy folks.